


Rebuilding

by mcicioni



Category: Da uomo a uomo | Death Rides a Horse (1967)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 07:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10894500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcicioni/pseuds/mcicioni
Summary: Various things happen after Bill rides out of El Viento.





	Rebuilding

**Author's Note:**

> I find the parting between Ryan and Bill at the end of _Death Rides a Horse_ heartbreaking. In my previous story ("The Right Thing") Ryan and Bill get back together in a relatively easy, unproblematic way. Then I thought of the tons of emotional baggage each man is carrying, and attempted to get them back together in a different way.  
>  Thanks to Timberwolfoz, for beta-reading and assorted suggestions; Linda and Kees, for Americanisms; and Lilit and Lola, for assistance with Spanish.  
> Comments are life blood and plasma.

**The first day**

Ryan stood and watched Bill and his horse become smaller and smaller, until they were a dot on the horizon and then disappeared altogether. A few gusts of wind were raising dust between the fountain and the windmill; he shivered, thought of his hat and jacket, and imagined that they, and his saddlebags, had probably been reduced to ashes when Walcott’s men had thrown a firebomb at the house where he had holed up with Bill.

He started buttoning up his shirt, wondering if he could bring himself to take a jacket or a coat off one of the corpses that littered El Viento. His fingers, fumbling with a buttonhole, met the thong and the skull, and something like a giant hand grabbed his insides and squeezed them viciously. His brain registered little more than the pain – he was tired, empty, with nothing to look forward to, no curiosity to see what lay beyond the end of this day.

For a moment he stood frozen, then a lifetime’s habit of self-control, perfected during fifteen years’ hard labour, reasserted itself. He finished buttoning his shirt and started walking towards the first few Mexicans who were cautiously coming out of wherever they had been hiding throughout the day.

The village elder was one of the first. “Señor Ryan,” he said, looking up at Ryan, with a number of different expressions – fear, gratitude, anger, hope – fighting it out on his wrinkled face.”We are glad that you are alive.”

“So am I,” he said, and with a little shock realised that it wasn’t untrue. He had helped Bill finish what he he had set out to do, had not been killed, and had watched Bill ride away without a scratch on him. What he was going to live for, now, was something else. Right now he was in El Viento – the people had been freed from the oppression of Walcott’s men, but half the village had been destroyed in the process. He smiled at the old man. “Need an extra hand to clean up?”

“We would like that very much,” the old man said simply.

“The first thing to do is collect the money from the bank robbery. What’s left of it. Whoever takes it back should get a reward. Or you people may decide not to take it back. Either way, you need it.”

“We have thought of this. We have sent the man who speaks best English, Mendoza, to Lyndon City. We have asked him to try and find out as much as he can about the bank. And the reward. And if anyone has been following Walcott and his men.”

The afternoon sun was warm enough, but someone found him a jacket that was not bloodstained and more or less fitted him. He and a dozen others spread out and walked around, looking for banknotes that might be piled up in corners or nesting on tree branches. Ryan retrieved the banknotes floating in the water trough, after lifting out the body of the man he had drowned and propping it up against a wall, with the other corpses that the rest of the villagers were recovering from alleys, courtyards and stables.

After a couple of hours every banknote that had not been blown away by the wind had been collected, added up and entrusted to the old man. For a few moments Ryan stood motionless in front of the little table where the dusty, torn notes lay, then slowly slid a hand inside his shirt, slipped the thong with the silver skull over his head and laid it on top of the money. The original silver chain had been swapped for a pair of work gloves on the second day of his jail sentence: the price to be paid to protect hands that would, fifteen years later, be handling guns again. “Sell it or throw it away. I don’t need it,” he said bluntly at the other man’s polite refusal. He turned away from him, breathing deeply and trying to clear his mind of unwelcome memories, and started looking around for things that were not beyond repair: shovels, pitchforks, wheelbarrows, pieces of furniture that had been used in the makeshift barricade of two days ago. Some village men were also collecting the weapons dropped by anyone who had died fighting and storing them somewhere safe; Ryan briefly hoped that they wouldn’t be needing them for a long time. The old woman who was the village healer offered him his own razor, which he had used to kill Walcott; he thanked her, shook his head and walked away.

He worked in silence, exchanging just a few essential words with the Mexicans, _over here_ and _broken_ and _a drink of water_ and _thank you_. He had got used to doing so in the fifteen years he had spent breaking up sides of mountains so that other men could build roads and railway tracks. For twelve hours a day, under searing sun or in pouring rain, wearing leg irons, he had swung sledgehammers and pickaxes, loaded broken-up rocks onto carts, dug and cleared away tons of dirt. Always keeping his mind blank, to stop the same thoughts whirling round and round and driving him crazy, _twenty-seven bullets, six in my gun, twenty-one in my belt_. And _eighty-two dollars in my pocket_ , and _buy a horse, find Cavanaugh first, Walcott second, the others last_.

He found a small, miraculously intact hope chest and lifted it carefully: “Where d’you want me to put this?”

“It belongs to the wife of Manuel. That house over there, by the fig tree. Is it too heavy, señor?"

He shook his head. “No. I’m used to carrying weights.” As he carried the chest into the house where it belonged, it occurred to him that this time, unlike the past fifteen years, he was following instructions, not orders. Working _with_ , not _for_ other men, linked to them not by a chain but by a common purpose, however vague and temporary. A small smile hovered around his lips as he stepped out of the house and stretched, breathing in the cool evening air and casting a glance at the outline of the mountains, faint in the darkening sky.

And saw the horse.

He blinked and shook his head to clear it. The tall dapple grey quarter-horse, fully saddled, bedroll tied behind the saddle, was almost exactly where it had been a few hours earlier, by the big stone arch that was a sort of gateway to the village. Small head, long white mane, broad chest, powerful hindquarters: Ryan could have recognised it anywhere, he had ridden beside it for over two weeks, and had taken it from Bill twice.

Ryan forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly, to control the fast pumping of his heart and the surge of emotion through his body. Fists clenching, he ordered himself to think. Could Bill have had second thoughts about unfinished business? No, the look they had exchanged when he rode off said that their business was finished. Was there something else he wanted in El Viento? Bill didn’t care a hoot about money, and had not left anything behind.

Ryan strode towards his own horse, tied to the rail in front of the taverna. His spare pipe was in a pouch tied to the horn of his saddle; he retrieved it and quickly lit it, his hands shaking a little. As he exhaled the first puff of smoke, he cast a quick glance into the lengthening shadows, and saw a tall figure in a blue shirt and sheepskin vest helping a couple of Mexicans lift a collapsed roof beam. Bill half-turned towards Ryan and nodded a brief, silent greeting. Ryan nodded back.

The women and children had come back, and goats and pigs were being recaptured and driven home, alleys were being swept, fires lit inside the houses. Cries and muffled curses were coming from the house next to the taverna, where the old woman healer was doing what she could for the people who had been wounded in the gunfight. In the last half hour or so of light, whatever could be salvaged among the split sacks of grain, seeds, potatoes was being retrieved and shared out. As he helped three men straighten up a cart full of hay that had fallen sideways at the bottom of a slope, Ryan looked up, and saw Bill at the top of the slope, a heavy sack on his shoulders, looking down at him. 

Then the girl with the long dark hair – Martita, Ryan had heard someone call her; the old man was Emilio – was at his side, her serious eyes searching his face, unafraid and kind. “Señor Ryan, we have prepared a meal in the taverna. It’s only cold food, but we would be glad if you and Señor Meceita would share it with us.”

The taverna had been more or less cleared of debris, and the long communal table had been washed and covered with plates and jugs. Some villagers had clustered at one end of the table, and Bill was alone at the other end. Ryan wordlessly sat down opposite him; Bill stretched a hand towards a plate of tortillas, took two and passed one along to Ryan. The women brought over some cheese and some dried apples; most of the jugs contained water, but a couple were full of some sort of fruity _aguardiente_. Ryan ate a little, filled a small glass, sipped, and suddenly his body felt dog-tired, filled only with a hunger-like need for sleep. Opposite him, Bill chewed quietly, sitting ramrod-straight, his eyes pale blue and expressionless in his dirt-streaked, stubbled face, neither searching nor avoiding Ryan’s.

Emilio and Martita came to stand beside them, offering them hospitality in short, hesitant English sentences. “There’s a house you can use. It belonged to Pedro and One-Eye. We have taken their things away, there was not much. Nights are cold, we can give you one blanket each. And this bottle. It’s only half full, we apologise.”

Outside, it really was cold, and almost completely black. Carrying the blankets, Bill walked swiftly ahead of Ryan, his blond thatch of hair barely visible in the darkness. He went to his horse, unsaddled it, unfastened the bedroll, slid his rifle from its saddle scabbard and rejoined Ryan.

The house was a dusty adobe room with a wooden door half off its hinges, a small round window like an empty eye socket in a skull, a table, two chairs, a small unlit stove, a double bed with a shelf above it. From the shelf, a wooden Virgin Mary looked upon them as they pushed the back of one chair against the doorknob and took off their hats and gunbelts.

Bill let one of the blankets fall to the floor, dropped his bedroll on top of it, threw the other blanket onto the bed, looked at Ryan and jerked his chin towards the bed. Ryan nodded thanks without arguing. They took their boots off and lay down, fully dressed, wrapping the blankets tightly around their bodies.

 _Aw, the hell with it_ , Ryan said wryly to himself, while he checked that his Colt was near his head, within easy reach if necessary. In the last fifteen years he had learned patience, he didn’t mind waiting until Bill was ready, but this was ridiculous. “Goodnight, Bill,” he said firmly into the darkness.

A long moment after, an answer came, Bill’s deep voice soft but clear in the dark. “Goodnight.” 

 

**The second day**

When Ryan opened his eyes, the dawn light was entering through the window and the gaps in the roof slates. The wind had not yet risen; he knew that it would be four, five hours before it would start blowing. He glanced across the room: Bill was awake in the cocoon of his bedroll, on his back, staring at the beams of the ceiling. Ryan wondered if he kept himself awake deliberately, to keep ghosts from visiting him in his sleep; then silently got out of bed, went out, found a bucket, filled it at the water pump, took his shirt off and started scrubbing his face, neck and shoulders. Something else he’d learned in jail was that even in the worst conditions a man had to do whatever he could to preserve some dignity, not to let himself go, not to become an animal. Washing and shaving regularly were part of it, the foundation of self-respect.

Emilio walked towards him, carrying a plate and a tiny piece of soap. He handed Ryan the soap and placed the plate on the ground: two pieces of bread and two small pieces of cheese. “Breakfast,” he said with a smile. Ryan smiled back, dried himself with the tails of his shirt, put it back on, grabbed the smaller pieces of bread and cheese and started eating.

“So what’s the plan for today?”

Emilio looked embarrassed, but forced himself to speak. “Mr Ryan, it is not a pleasant thing to ask of a guest, but I must ask. Walcott and his men do not deserve a place in our little cemetery. But they do not deserve to be left out in the open for the buzzards and the animals, or …” He pointed at the skulls of the five men who had been buried alive by Walcott’s men in their previous raids. “We counted nineteen bodies. Would you help us dig a big pit?”

Ryan nodded: “I know how to dig.”

“Count me in,” Bill’s deep voice said from the doorway. He stepped out, nodded thanks to Emilio and made short work of the bread and cheese. “Where do we go?”

In the empty land behind El Viento they worked as fast as they could before the wind rose, Ryan, Bill and a dozen strong-looking men, stripped to the waist, stopping only to stretch and have a drink of water. The rest of the people were busy repairing walls and fences and stretching squares of canvas across broken windows. Ryan hoped that some of the bank money, or the reward for it, would be spent in buying a few glass panes. It was a poor village, but this morning the air was filled with the sounds and smells of two or three cows, a few pigs and quite a few chickens, and from the taverna and several houses came aromas that were a promise of hot food in the evening.

They worked against time, and the pit quickly grew deeper; after a couple of hours they were almost up to their knees. As he plied his pick, breaking the hard dry soil and coordinating his movements with those of the man behind him as they flung it out of the pit, Ryan was conscious of Bill, a few yards away from him, of the sinewy strength of his arms, of the unconscious grace of his movements. A few times he felt something like a faint itch between his shoulderblades, straightened up and glanced at Bill, and Bill stopped working, turned, and looked right back at him.

When the wind rose, the pit was almost ready. “We will finish tonight,” Emilio said. Sighing wearily, the men dispersed in search of water, shade and rest. Ryan collected a jug of fresh water from the taverna, took it to the little adobe house and spent a little time savouring the bliss of doing nothing but sit, smoke his pipe and let water trickle down his throat. Then he wandered through the village, the wind whistling around him, wondering where Bill could be.

Close to the stone arch, he heard Bill’s voice on the other side of it: “ _Agárrate con las rodillas_.” In easy, idiomatic Spanish, he was telling someone to keep their knees tight. Ryan strolled under the arch, leaned against the stone wall and watched. The big grey horse was being led around the fountain and between the trees, Bill holding the halter, a small Mexican boy sitting on it and holding the reins, both so absorbed in what they were doing that they scarcely noticed the dust and debris blowing all around them. When they went past him, the boy looked straight ahead, and Bill greeted him with the briefest flicker of his eyelids.

After half an hour or so, Bill stopped the horse: “ _Vámonos a casa, chico_.” He gently took the child by the waist, lifted him off the horse, showed him how to tie it to a rail, and, holding his hand, went off towards the taverna. Intrigued and amused, Ryan followed them at some distance; they entered the taverna, and after a while Bill came out, alone.

“His mother was killed yesterday in the crossfire,” he said abruptly. “Some old women were crying and praying all over him.” A pause. “Martita and Emilio are going to look after him. This is a small village, everybody looks after everybody else.” Then he relapsed into silence.

By mid-afternoon the wind had abated, and by early evening the pit had been dug and the bodies – including the skeletons of the five men buried alive by the bandits – now lay in it. There was no priest (‘he only comes once a month,” Martita whispered), but most of the women and a few men were standing or kneeling by the mass grave, repeating the Catholic prayer for eternal rest.

Standing at the top of an external flight of stairs, Ryan watched them. It would be absurd for him to stand, head uncovered, by the grave of the men who had died by his hand or Bill’s. For a moment he remembered his parents, chased away from Ireland by hunger: good Catholics to the end, and their reward had been a son who had gone wrong. These men, whoever they had been, whatever they had done, at least had someone saying farewell to them; he doubted that anyone would as much as say one prayer over him after he had stopped the final bullet. 

He lit his pipe and blew out impatient puffs of smoke, annoyed by the direction his memories were taking, but unable to turn them in another direction. He recalled the day Bill had taken his horse and ridden off to get to El Viento first, and he remembered his own parting words, _I was thinking I would have liked to have had a son like you. Because I’ll probably wind up some day with a bullet in my back, and there won’t be a son to avenge me_. Son. That’s what he had called Bill from the second time they had met, when he had taken Bill’s grey and started this pattern of each of them leaving the other one on foot; the son he never had, that’s what he had been telling Bill, and himself, until Bill had ridden out.

He drew deeply on the pipe as other moments flashed through his mind, moments in which he had looked at the younger man and seen him in a different light. Bill standing in front of the window, his back to him, his hands up – broad shoulders, long legs, small round backside. Bill’s confident look of challenge, “ _Get ready to get mad_.” Bill shovelling dirt, wiping sweat off his forehead and neck, muscles playing in his back. Bill’s intense blue eyes, concentrating on the small orphan who probably reminded him of himself.

He let out a long breath. All this came from the past, from his time in jail – the needs he had experienced and satisfied as best as he could, the needs he had (less often, and never without a fight) been forced to satisfy. That was gone, finished. Not to be given in to, ever again. He shook himself, put his pipe out, put it in his pocket and wandered off towards the taverna.

Bill was straddling a chair outside it. “You speak pretty good Spanish,” Ryan said as he approached.

“My father was Mexican,” Bill replied shortly, then added: “And you’re still pretty strong for a grandfather.” Ryan snorted, Bill smirked. “And pretty good at diggin. Where’d you learn?”

Ryan looked at him steadily. “You always ask too many questions.” Then he blinked, realising that, after all that had happened, a question was a small tentative step out of the wall of silence, maybe even an outstretched hand. “Stick around a while and I may tell you one of these days.” He smiled down at Bill. “Let’s go eat.”

In the middle of the night, Ryan was wakened by noises in the room. Bill was half out of his blankets, struggling for breath, eyes closed, body shaken by harsh, wrenching sobs. Ryan got up and laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Bill. Wake up.” Bill’s eyes came open, full of terror, and immediately afterwards became blank, unreadable.

“I’m all right,” he ground out, the muscles in his throat tightening.

Ryan sighed, padded barefoot to the door, opened it carefully and went to the back of the house to relieve himself. When he padded back in, Bill was lying motionless in his bedroll, eyes open, staring into the darkness.

“Get up,” Ryan said gently. “Bed’s wide enough.”

No reply or sign of acknowledgement.

“Up.” Ryan reached over, took hold of one of Bill’s arms and pulled him up. Bill stood there, stock-still, unblinking. Ryan bent down, picked up Bill’s blanket and threw it on the bed.

“Come on,” he said, lying back down. “I’ll tell you a bedtime story, how I learned to dig.” That got a result: a grimace, and Bill’s long limbs slowly stretching out beside him.

Settling in side by side, under both covers, they waited for body heat to warm them. After a few silent minutes, Bill half rolled over to face Ryan. “So. Start the story.”

“I made a lot of dumb choices, and ended up in the state penitentiary,” Ryan said bluntly, then paused. “Bank robbery that went wrong. And before the trial, Cavanaugh and Walcott did a deal with the sheriff. They, Pedro and One-Eye all said I was the one who had planned and led the heist; so the four of them got away with six-month sentences, and I did fifteen years’ hard labour.”

“That’s why you wanted their money instead of their lives,” Bill said slowly, without adding _and nobody did any time for the Meceita ranch_. “And now you’re livin happily ever after, right?”

“Ha.” Ryan silenced his wish to ask why Bill had decided to come back. “Go to sleep,” he said instead. He checked that his Colt was on his side and stayed awake, breathing deeply and evenly, until he was sure that Bill had fallen asleep. Then he allowed himself to drift off.

Some time later, Bill cried out once, in grief or fear or both, without awakening. Ryan instinctively threw an arm around him, and they slept like that until daylight.

 

**The third day**

Ryan opened his eyes as a ray of sunlight struck them. He turned to the other side of the bed; it and the room were empty. He noticed some stirrings of arousal in his body, remembered what things had been like when he was Bill’s age, felt amused, and at the same time feared that Bill might have decided to bolt again. He got up and washed, cold anxiety beginning to creep into his veins at the thought of not finding Bill when he walked into the village.

Bill was standing at the foot of a ladder, tying up small bundles of straw and reeds and handing them to a man on top of the ladder, who pushed them into the gaps of a thatched roof. Other men were repairing the red clay tiles of other roofs and the broken and burned parts of stairways and doorways. Several women were carrying armfuls of dirty clothes to a corner where other women were heating water in a couple of big cauldrons. Behind the village, the hills were yellow and dry. On the horizon, the mountains looked cold, inaccessible.

“What can I do?”

“Before … all this, the village had a few vines.” Emilio pointed towards a hillside, at some ravaged rows of vines, some burned, others trampled by horses, others withered for lack of water, all covered by yellow dust. “It would be good to drive a few posts, plant more vines, start anew.” Ryan and three other men spent the morning on the hillside, digging out poles and driving them into new ground: when the women brought them bread, peppers and water, a few fairly regular rows of posts had replaced the old ones, and were standing hopefully, waiting for new seed. Free work, freely chosen, with other free men; it felt good.

Throughout the morning the wind blew gently, allowing the work to continue. In the afternoon it blew harder, with rustling, whistling sounds, threatening to blow away anything that hadn’t been tied or hammered down; the villagers gave up and gathered in the taverna, playing cards and trying to discuss the future. There was a checkerboard, and Ryan and Bill started playing each other; there was no need for words, and the looks they exchanged were friendly, but guarded.

After supper, they walked the short distance to the small house without speaking. They opened the door, wedged it with the chair, looked at the blankets folded at the foot of the bed, then at each other.

“You cold?” Bill asked, his eyes dark blue in the dimness of the room. 

“Cold enough.”

“Right.” Bill shook out his bedroll on the bed and spread the blankets over it. Then he sat on one of the chairs and concentrated on removing his boots. Afterwards he reached for the bottle the Mexicans had given them on the first night and took a small drink. “Damn, no glasses.”

“I don’t mind.” Sitting on the bed, Ryan took off his boots, put a hand out for the bottle, gave the mouth a perfunctory wipe, drank deep and passed it back over.

Bill didn’t bother to wipe the mouth of the bottle and drank again before speaking. “The other day. I had a couple of things to figure out.” The words, abrupt as they were, were obviously the result of some inner battles. Ryan found his pipe, filled it, lit it, took a slow draw and waited.

“And have you?” he asked eventually.

“Yeah.” A pause. “When I headed off , I thought, we’ve had our reckoning, we’re through. And then …” He had another drink. “I thought, neither of us has anythin better to go to, so we may as well ride together.” He smirked. “Besides, I’ve kinda got used to savin your life once a week or so.”

Ryan considered two or three responses, decided against them, sucked a little smoke into his mouth. “And the second thing?”

Bill put the bottle down and gave Ryan a look that was as direct and as threatening as a levelled gun. “And the second thing is, I ain’t your son and don’t want to be your son either.”

Ryan suddenly felt a little dizzy, blood racing through his veins, air filling his lungs. He took a deep breath. “Good,” he said, deadpan, emptying his pipe and placing his Colt on his side of the bed. “Now that that’s setttled, can we get some sleep?”

They slid under the blankets and lay on their backs, close enough for body warmth but without touching. After a while Ryan said “Goodnight” and turned over on his side; he was starting to doze off, when Bill spoke again, directing his words to Ryan’s back.

“Fifteen years without women.” A long pause. “But there must have been … ways of … managin.”

“What the hell do you …” Ryan stopped. What, and how, could someone left alone in the world at eight or nine have learned about sex? “We found ways.” Quick, rough fucks behind trees or over rocks or in the bunkhouse, often with violence on one side and fear on the other. Part of his past, part of him. In the darkness, he grimaced in disgust.

“Like this.” Not a question. And there was no fear in Bill’s voice, as he turned over, spooning against Ryan, and reached over, put a hand on the front of Ryan’s trousers, cupped Ryan’s sex and rested there, feeling Ryan swell and harden under the rough cloth.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, little shudders beginning to run from his neck to his toes as Bill’s hand became more determined, stroking steadily, beginning to fumble around the buttons.

“Wait,” Ryan said with a low chuckle, making short work of the buttons, getting his erection out and covering Bill’s hand with his. He helped Bill’s fingers get a firm grip, guided them to pull gently at first, then strongly and rhythmically, and then control and awareness flew out of his head and he surrendered to the sensation of the body behind him pressing against his back, of Bill’s soft grunts and gasps against his neck. He closed his eyes, couldn’t hold back a short cry, and spilled inside the tangle of fingers.

He lay with his eyes still closed, stunned by the discovery of pleasure and joy as well as release. Then he blinked, silently called himself a selfish bastard, and turned to Bill. Eyes open wide, lips parting to draw in breath, his companion was the picture of wonder.

“Damn,” he murmured in astonishment, “I never knew …”

“Wait,” Ryan said again, more authoritatively. “You’ve still got a lot to learn. Don’t move.” He sat up, and, without taking his eyes from Bill’s face, he unbuttoned the various layers of clothes Bill was wearing – hell, it _was_ cold – and started sliding down Bill’s body.

“Oh God, Ryan. You can’t …”

“Says who?” Ryan laughed – he hadn’t laughed this happily for years, maybe fifteen, maybe more – and brushed Bill’s hard, slick flesh with his lips, running his tongue around the tip, his fingers stroking Bill’s balls until he had him arching and writhing and clutching the blankets. Only then did he close his mouth around him, lapping and sucking, slowly at first, to get him used to the idea, then faster, scraping him with mustache and teeth, flicking and sucking while Bill thrust harder and harder, wildly, his hands clenched on Ryan’s shoulders, his body tensing. Ryan looked up: Bill’s eyes were huge, filled with desire and pleasure. Bill gasped something inaudible and burst into a long, long sequence of hot spurts; Ryan rested his face on Bill’s thigh, an arm across his belly, quietly, more at peace than he had ever been since who knew when.

Bill’s hands pulled him up until they were face to face, and his hand stroked Ryan’s cheek, a clumsy caress with a hint of teasing: “You ain’t been shavin.”

“Need to buy a new razor,” Ryan replied, and saw a faint tinge of colour rise in Bill’s face. He returned Bill’s caress, more slowly, lingering on the roundness of Bill’s cheeks, covered in reddish-blond stubble: “May get you one too.” Touching someone with tenderness was almost completely new to him, he was going to have to learn how. They both were going to. But it seemed to come easily enough.

Bill’s fingers unbuttoned Ryan’s shirt, moved through the curls on Ryan’s chest, and suddenly stopped. “You’ve taken it off.” He sounded surprised as well as pleased.

“I gave it away,” Ryan said shortly. He lay back on the bed, eyes closed, trying to make sense of what was happening. His past history, and Bill’s, and the history between them, could not be burned or buried. But maybe, like the posts of those vines on the hill, some memories could be thrown out for firewood, some could be secured, some could be new. And maybe after some time there would be new vines, new grapes, new wine. Maybe.

“What’s on your mind, Grandpa?”

“Vineyard posts.”

With a low chuckle, Bill took Ryan’s hand and placed it on his own sticky, barely tumescent groin. “Not yet.”

Later, Ryan woke up, needing to get out. Bill was fast asleep, a desperately forlorn expression on his face, his cheeks wet. He got back into bed and pulled him close. Bill mumbled something, buried his head against Ryan’s shoulder and drifted back into sleep. Ryan lay awake in the darkness, holding Bill against him.

 

**The fourth day**

Ryan was jolted awake by an assortment of clattering sounds. In one second, he opened his eyes, seized his gun and pointed it at the source of the noise. Bill flashed him a little wry smile: in one hand he held a hammer, in the other the door he had just removed. 

Ryan shook his head at him. “You don’t know how close you came to getting your head blown off.”

Bill put down the hammer, grabbed an old chisel, and started working on the place where the hinge had come off. “I know you always look before you pull the trigger,” he stated casually.

Before the wind rose, Bill went off to find little Pablito and take him riding, while Ryan and other men worked on the cabin where Pablito and his mother had lived. They fixed the door and window shutters, straightened up the few shelves and the bed, then, as the wind came, they moved Martita and her few belongings into her new home. Ryan took the girl aside and pushed some notes into the pocket of her skirt: “Make sure he grows up straight.” She seemed to understand, and nodded gratefully.

Mid-afternoon, with the wind blowing fiercely, Mendoza returned from Lyndon City, on a lathered, exhausted-looking horse. After drinking a jugful of water he went off in search of the two Americans, and found them having a break before going off to rebuild what was left of the goat shelter.

“Have you heard of a man called Burt Cavanaugh, from a town called Holly Spring?”

Ryan saw again Bill’s four bullets finding the four aces tattooed on Cavanaugh’s chest, and Bill’s look of surprise when the last of Cavanaugh’s gunmen had been shot, not by his empty gun but by Ryan’s. He saw that Bill had paled a little. “Yeah, we have. Why?”

“Cavanaugh was a big shot in Holly Spring. He was killed in revenge. By two men, one young, one older.” He gave the Americans a long, somber look. “Cavanaugh had a younger brother, who was away, in college at Austin. The brother travelled from Holly Spring to Lyndon City, always asking questions about you two. And in Lyndon City someone told him that Walcott and his men used to hide out here. In a day or so he’ll get here.”

Ryan frowned. “You people have already had enough trouble from us. We’ll head him off outside the village.”

“ _I_ ’ll head him off.” There was a harsh, uncompromising edge to Bill’s voice. “I’m the one who shot his brother.” He stood up to leave, but Mendoza stopped him:

“Wait. He won’t arrive until tomorrow, or maybe the day after. You have one day to prepare.”

Bill gave him a quick nod, got up and headed for the goat shelter. He and Ryan worked together for what was left of the afternoon, with the wind gusting around them and biting through their jackets, exchanging the barest minimum of words, _here_ and _give me the hammer_ and _too long_ and _careful_. Supper was quick and quiet, the taverna was almost empty, and Emilio and Martita looked from one to the other of them and exchanged worried glances.

The repaired door of their house kept out the cold and other people’s fretting. Bill stepped in, took his hat off and faced Ryan with the same ice-cold determination he had had when he had faced off against him three days earlier.

“When I said I ain’t your son, I meant _this_ as well. You don’t speak for me, you don’t decide for me. Or else we’re through.” He turned his back on Ryan, picked up his rifle, broke it open and checked the bullets.

“No matter what I say, you’re going to ride off on your own. So my only choice is to let you. Unless I knock you out cold and tie you up.”

“I wouldn’t try it, Grandpa,” Bill said coolly.

Ryan thought _You may be surprised_ , but refrained from saying it aloud. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “All right. I give you my word that I won’t step between you and Cavanaugh in any way.” Bill gave him a long appraising glance, nodded curtly and stood his rifle in a corner near his side of the bed. He reached for the bottle that stood, almost empty, on the table.

“Enough for one small drink apiece.” He took his, passed the bottle to Ryan, and just stood there, hands hanging down his side:

“We goin to be ridin together after this is over?”

Ryan drank the little that was left in the bottle and gave him a level look. “I guess so. If you manage to stay alive, that is.”

“I aim to.” Bill took one step forward, swallowing hard. “I want you.” 

“Same here.” Ryan took the two steps that separated them, took Bill’s face in his hands and kissed him. It was like diving into a waterfall or galloping hell for leather without anyone behind him, a moment of exhilaration and joy as Bill’s mouth opened under his, as they moaned softly into each other’s mouth and tasted the Mexican liquor on each other’s tongue. A mustache had its uses, Ryan realised, tickling Bill’s lips with it and feeling them open in a little smile, and then he felt Bill’s lips moving over his skin and stubble, finding the traces of the years that separated them and licking them away, and for a moment they were equally new, equally delighted in their discovery.

“Bed,” they said, almost together.

They quickly shed their clothes, almost without looking at each other – Ryan thought fleetingly that next time, if there was a next time, he’d show Bill how much more interesting it was to undress each other, and to take their time – and got between the two blankets, shivering.

“Cold as hell,” Bill said cheerfully, filling his arms with the other man and squeezing him tight. Ryan freed himself and shook his head.

“On your back.”

Bill blinked, but did as he was told, and silently looked up at him, cock rising in the pale-brown nest of curls. Ryan felt himself filling and hardening as he became aware that he was enjoying giving Bill orders – like he had, to a lesser extent, the times when Bill had tried to sneak up on him. But here he was being obeyed freely, by choice, not by force. He slid an arm under Bill’s neck and kissed him deep, then stretched himself out over Bill’s longer body, making Bill feel his weight, his muscles, his arousal, and aligned their cocks and started thrusting hard, setting a fast pace, in a silence broken only by gasps and grunts and flesh slapping against flesh and balls slapping against balls. Pleasure taken strongly and roughly, not brutally, so different, so good; and Bill seemed to understand this, as his hips met each of Ryan’s thrusts and slammed back hard onto the slats of the bed, and his fingers grabbed Ryan’s buttocks and squeezed feverishly, as he panted hard against Ryan’s sweat-covered shoulder.

They let go almost at the same time, violent spasms shooting out of them. Ryan slid off Bill’s body and fell back on the bed, waiting for his heart to stop hammering, breathless and dizzy with release and new feelings. Bill, faster to recover, lifted the blanket and took a long, leisurely look at Ryan’s body, running a finger along the scars on Ryan’s arms and ribs, tracing his nails through the chest hair, finding and squeezing a nipple, caressing the hints of middle-age spread at the waist.

“You ain’t all that hard on the eyes,” he said eventually, with an unguarded smile, eyes crinkling a little.

“I’m forty-eight years old,” Ryan replied matter-of-factly.

“So? Shut up,” Bill said, bending over Ryan and kissing him quick and hard, and Ryan with wry amusement realised that obeying orders could also, under certain circumstances, be exciting. But it was getting late, and who knew what the next day would bring.

“We need to get some rest,” he said, regretfully but finally. He pulled the blankets over them both, waited for Bill to spoon his longer body behind his, checked that his Colt was on his side of the bed, within easy reach, and let himself drift.

Throughout the night, Bill shuddered and moaned, but never woke up. 

 

**The fifth day**

It was not yet dawn. Ryan’s body tensed a little, but he kept his eyes closed and his breathing slow and even. Bill was getting up, very softly, collecting rifle, gunbelt, boots and clothes; he opened the door noiselessly, looked at Ryan, went out and closed the door behind himself.

Ryan threw his clothes on, waited until he heard a horse galloping away, and went out. The only open door was that of the taverna; Emilio was standing outside it, throwing worried glances at a piece of paper he held in his hand. 

“Señor Bill gave it to me. For the man who will arrive today.”

Ryan held out a hand for the paper; Emilio wordlessly handed it to him, his eyes showing trust and concern. 

_Cavanaugh,_  
_I want to meet you. Half a mile away from the vilage theres a clump of mezkite trees. Im there waitin. ___  
_I am alone. Come alone. ___  
_B. Meceita ___  


_____ _

_____ _

Ryan saddled up and rode out of the village. He was familiar with the area: with a twinge of regret and guilt he remembered the times he had holed up there when he was riding with Walcott. He kept his distance from the clump of mesquite and swung out in a circle around the road between El Viento and the border. He stopped in the middle of some rock outcroppings, behind the mesquite trees, out of pistol range but easily within rifle range of them; he dismounted, tethered his horse to a bush, gave him a little water, sat with his back to a rock and with his rifle on his knees, and waited. No sign of Bill, but his grey was hitched to one of the trees. Ryan could feel the sun growing warmer on his back; the air was very still, with no wind, the silence broken only by the occasional cicada.

Midmorning, he was looking down the road toward El Viento when he saw three riders trotting towards the village. They slowed down and stopped before the gate. One, riding a sorrel, went through it and ten minutes later came out again, briefly rejoined the others, and then headed for the mesquite; the others moved one to the left, circling around the mesquite, and one, on a strawberry roan, to the right, roughly the same way Ryan had gone.

It didn’t take the man on the roan long to sight Ryan’s horse. He left his own mount not far from Ryan’s, drew his gun and started making his way cautiously among the rock outcroppings. 

“Don’t turn around,” Ryan said softly behind him, stepping out from behind a boulder, gun in hand. “Hands above your head.”

Quickly and silently he moved up to the man and relieved him of his gun, half smiling to himself as he remembered the cold fury in Bill’s eyes when he had found himself in the same predicament.

“Turn around and untie your bandana.” Ryan grabbed the bandana, balled it up in one hand and stuffed it into the man’s mouth, then quickly and efficiently tied his hands and feet with a rope he found on the man’s horse. He sketched him an ironic salute before returning to his rock and half-crouching against it, pointing his Winchester towards the area where the second man had disappeared.

The man on the sorrel reached the mesquite, saw Bill’s horse, dismounted, and tied his horse beside Bill’s. Then he looked around and spoke, loud and determined.

“I’m Dave Cavanaugh. Burt Cavanaugh’s brother.” He was about Bill’s age, Ryan guessed, feeling a wave of contempt and hatred wash over him at the thought of Burt, who had not hesitated to destroy the family and the house of a boy like his brother.

Bill walked out of the trees, hands away from his gun, and started walking towards the road, followed by Cavanaugh. They came to a stop halfway between the mesquite trees and the spot where Ryan was hiding. Then Bill spoke for the first time.

“How much did you know about your brother?”

“Enough. He brought me up after our parents died. He sent me away to college. I owe him everything. That’s why I’m going to kill you.”

“No one sent me to college after your brother and his pals killed my family. I learned how to shoot, instead. So ride on out of here, Cavanaugh.”

“Not until you’ve faced me.”

Breathing deeply and slowly, Ryan was listening and at the same time scanning the trees, looking for any movement of branches or shadows. Nothing.

“I’ve killed the people I had to kill. I’m done. I’m not goin to fight you.” And Bill turned his back on Cavanaugh and started to slowly walk away from him.

Ryan’s blood ran cold. The damned fool was going to get himself killed – and _he_ had given his word and couldn’t do anything to help. Then a shiver ran down his spine as he recognised his own decision of four days earlier: to refuse to kill the other man, and to hope, for both their sakes, that the other man wouldn’t shoot an opponent in the back. He stood frozen, gripping his rifle, one certainty filling his mind, _the hell with my word, he hurts Bill, he’s dead_.

Dave Cavanaugh stood motionless, pistol levelled at Bill’s back, his face twisting. Bill kept walking slowly and steadily. And Ryan, looking at the mesquite behind Cavanaugh, glimpsed a flash of sunlight on rifle barrels, made a frantic calculation, aimed below the flash of sunlight, to the left, and fired. The third man fell headlong from a tree branch, pitched to the ground and did not move.

Dave Cavanaugh wheeled around, saw his injured companion, turned and fired a shot towards where he thought Bill would be. But Bill had drawn, hit the ground and rolled over a short distance: in a split second he aimed and squeezed the trigger, and Cavanaugh cried out, dropped his gun and crumpled over, clutching his upper arm.

Ryan ran out of the rocks towards the road, to check on the man he had shot. His bullet had grazed his ribs, but the fall had broken his neck. He walked towards the two young men with his rifle in the crook of his elbow. 

“We both lied,” Dave Cavanaugh said bitterly.

“No,” Bill said. “My friend gave me his word that he wouldn’t step between you and me. He kept it.”

Ryan felt a small inner stab of pleasure at _my friend_ , but all he said was, “Your other pal is tied up in the rocks. I’ll bring him into the village. Bill can take you to a woman who may be able to patch your arm.”

They took the shirt off the dead man, made a tourniquet for Cavanaugh’s arm and put him on his horse. After swinging up onto the grey, Bill turned towards Ryan.

“I did what you did with me. Dared him to shoot me in the back.”

“Except that you wouldn’t, and he did,” Ryan said drily.

Bill nodded, then looked down at Ryan, and his eyes were warm, peaceful. “Looks like you and I are fixin to spend some more time savin each other’s lives,” he said, before moving off.

Much later that night, they lay in bed facing each other, satisfied and exhausted, covered in sweat and seed, waiting for their heartbeats to subside. It was their last night in El Viento, they had agreed that the time to leave had come. Ryan ran a slow hand up and down Bill’s back, enjoying the way Bill arched under the touch, like a cat: hard, headstrong, dangerous, and so young.

“Hey,” Bill said, a deep, soft purr.

“What?”

“I got to ask you somethin.”

 _Anything_ , Ryan wanted to say, but settled on “Go ahead.”

“After all this,” Bill rose up on an elbow, and with his other hand vaguely gestured at their weeks of shared past, at the last few days, possibly at the future, “I can’t keep on callin you Ryan. What the hell’s your first name anyway?”

Ryan thought it over. “All right. Make it Dan.”

Bill raised both eyebrows. “Daniel? So what was the big secret? Hundreds of Daniels around.”

Ryan sighed deeply. “My folks were very Irish. Devout worshippers of Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne.” He looked out of the window, at the sky that was just beginning to change from black to dark blue. “And even after all this,” he mirrored Bill’s earlier sweeping gesture, “I’ll geld you with a blunt saw if you ever let on to anyone else. That’s a warning.” The warmth in his eyes partly contradicted the threat; Bill threw his head back and laughed out loud, unselfconsciously, and it was like they had just exchanged gifts.

“I won’t breathe a word. For as long as we ride together.” 

In the middle of the night, Ryan needed to get up: he untangled himself from the blanket and saw that Bill had curled up into a knot, fear and fury alternating on his face as he slept. He got back into bed on the other side – away from his gun, but nothing much was likely to happen in the next couple of hours – and fitted his body around Bill’s, rubbing his back and making little soothing sounds, gentling him as he would do with a skittish horse; he smiled in satisfaction when Bill, with a couple of little sounds of his own, slowly uncurled and stretched out his long limbs within the circle of Ryan’s arms.

**The sixth day**

The six horses were saddled and ready. Dave Cavanaugh – with his arm in a sling, and looking young and lost – and his friend were bound for home, wherever that was. Mendoza and another man had been selected to ride to Lyndon City and collect the bank’s reward, ten percent of however much cash was being returned. Bill and Ryan were going to go along with them almost as far as Lyndon City, just in case they met anyone suspicious.

“You really trust us,” Bill said, smiling warmly: a good sight, becoming a little less rare.

“We have always trusted you, Señor Meceita,” Martita said simply. Ryan looked at her sad eyes and wondered what she might have hoped. “You too, Señor Ryan.” He smiled fondly at her: “ _Buena suerte, señorita_.”

Bill was looking in his saddlebags. He pulled out a small bundle wrapped in a dirty shirt and looked around for Pablito. The boy was hiding between Martita and the healer, his eyes brimming. Bill handed him the bundle; the boy dropped it, and three silver spurs fell to the ground.

“Take them,” Bill said. “It’s all I can give you. Don’t use them when you’re ridin.” He awkwardly ruffled the boy’s hair. “ _Cuídate, guapo_.”

“And what will the two of you do?” the old healer asked. 

They looked at each other. “We don’t know yet,” Ryan said. “No rush.” Future days were uncertain: something he was beginning to be curious about, something he cautiously looked forward to. “Maybe,” he turned the unfamiliar idea around in his mind, “we’ll try living peacefully for a while.”

“We thank you,” Emilio said, shaking their hands and stretching on the tips of his toes to pat their shoulders.

“We thank _you_ ,” Bill said simply, and mounted up. The wind began to rise as, side by side, they rode out of the village they had – just a week before – entered separately.


End file.
